A heavy-set veteran character actor with more than 70 movies to his credit, he earned acclaim as the lonely New York butcher in Marty (1955), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also remembered as the outlaw in The Wild Bunch (1969) and the Skipper on a PT boat in the TV series McHale's Navy (1962–66). Most recently, he was seen in BASEketball (2000) and starred in the TV series The Single Guy (1995–96), but is best known for acting in westerns and war and action/adventure movies.